


Loki and the Heartbook

by DarkWaterFalls



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Minor Thor 2 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-10
Updated: 2013-11-10
Packaged: 2018-01-01 01:42:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1038844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkWaterFalls/pseuds/DarkWaterFalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for <a href="http://breastforce.tumblr.com/post/66374424805/imagine-somebody-whos-immortal-having-a-gigantic">this post on tumblr.</a><br/>Loki collects mementos from people he loves and stores them somewhere secret and safe.<br/>Minor Thor: The Dark World spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loki and the Heartbook

He'd had various insults thrown at him over the years, Loki the cold, Loki the heartless. Heart of stone and mind made of metal. Resistant and unyielding to anything presented to him. Loki ignored it for the most part, he learnt to keep his thoughts to himself and his heart locked tightly away. Loki the cold.

What he didn't tell anyone of was the stories he kept to himself, tucked close to his chest and rarely opened unless he was to add to it. Tucked into a pocket dimension just large enough for it... he had a book of mementos, add-ons to the memories he held dearly, items to facilitate his recollections of people. He had pages for his family, for his children, and for those he had met over the years. There were pages for the living, like Thor (heavily, and now regretfully, redacted in places) and Hela, and there were many pages for the dead.

They were people over the years who had shown him kindness, whether they knew who he was or not. Mortals he had met briefly as they shone across his mind's eye, a blink of time for him, and a lifetime association for them. Sometimes there was little more than a sketch available, drawn in charcoal from Loki's memory as a remembrance piece. He regretted that he had so little of his mother for his book. She had measured her love in actions, not items. Loki's memories were abound with her, but his book reflected a measly few items he had mindlessly gathered over the years. Loki had believed that she would be with him for so much longer.

It was after her death that he had started to take care of the book more actively, added items as he found them, expanded its number of pages and added to the binding keeping it all together. He didn't want to miss anything anymore, didn't want to risk losing something so valuable without keepsake again.

It was why Tony took up so many of his pages. After his mother's death, Loki had painstakingly added as much of the mortal to the book as was possible. Tony had had something called a Polaroid camera, an old piece of equipment (ancient, he'd actually said, and Loki had grinned at the use of the word) that was still in working order. Loki had taken photos with it over the years until the mechanisms broke and no more film could be bought, begged, borrowed or stolen for it. Tony was the feature of most of the photos, if not all if you considered that they were taken because of Tony.

Loki had taken possession of the camera when woken one morning from sleep to the click and whirr of the machine as it spat out the photo. He'd mock tussled with Tony for the device, before pinning him to kiss him and then being drawn to the photo as it developed in front of his eyes. It was a perfect image of Tony grinning at the camera as Loki slept on his chest. Loki had begged for the photo. Believing Loki to be enamoured with the tech and not the subject matter and what it meant to him, Tony easily agreed and offered the camera as well.

So Loki had had to stretch the binding, tie the book up with leather cords to ensure nothing was lost, as he expanded his Heartbook. He pilfered little bits and pieces from Tony over the course of the years to add to the mountain of photos. A square of cotton, spelled to not lose its scent, cut from an inside edge of Tony's favourite pillowcase. Fragments of discarded metal from Tony's lab, some deposited in his hand by Tony's little robots from time to time. A label off a bottle of spirits they had shared. A small bag of sand from one of the vacation spots they regularly visited. There is a lock of hair from when Tony shaved his head in a fit of anger and grief. The first red rose that Tony had given him.

He opens the full book again one night, examines its well worn constituents. If he was to stand outside on a windy day, he could lose it all. Too precious was it to lose, he could never risk this book. He tucks a few more items into the book, marking a date and a time with a shaking hand. A white rose now sits with the red, along with a pamphlet from the first mortal funeral he had attended in years.

He looks about the room swiftly; judges there to be nothing of value left and tucks the book back into the magical pocket over his heart. He leaves, leaving nothing behind because he is taking everything he treasures with him.


End file.
